Rapidly increasing end-of-life care needs: a timely warning

BMC Medicine

Commentary

Geoffrey Mitchell¹ 

[1] Faculty of Medicine,University of Queensland, Herston Road, 4006, Herston, Australia;

关键词: End-of-life care;    Primary care;    Healthcare planning;    Healthcare integration;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12916-017-0897-2

 received in 2017-05-31, accepted in 2017-06-22,  发布年份 2017

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

Current trends in population ageing show that, in the near future, while more people will live longer, more will also die at any one time. Health systems, as well as individual practitioners, are only just becoming aware of the extent of this problem. Health systems will have to rapidly change practice to manage the number of people dying in the coming years, many with complex multimorbid conditions. The changes involved should include a personal recognition by all health professionals of their role in caring for the dying, and healthcare education must include end-of-life care management as part of the core curriculum. Further, health systems must improve integration between primary care and specialist clinicians to ensure the burden is shared efficiently across the system. Finally, it should be recognised that end-of-life care is not terminal care, but should be anticipated months or sometimes years ahead through advance care planning for known future complications by the patient’s clinical team, as well as by patients and their main carers, to manage crises as they ariserather than react to them once they arise.Please see related article: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-017-0860-2.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s). 2017